


O Ye Tongues

by thestargirl



Category: The Virgin Suicides, The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, mentions of sexual stuff(not abuse) but not sure how much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23537731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestargirl/pseuds/thestargirl
Summary: Let God be as large as a sunlamp to laugh his heart at you.Let there be an earth with a form like a jigsaw and let it fit for all of ye.Let there be the darkness of a darkroom out of the deep. A worm room.Let there be a God who sees the light at the end of a long thin pipe and lets it in.- Anne SextonFive suicides, and only three are successful. The other two feel more like rebirths.
Relationships: Trip Fontaine/Lux Lisbon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	1. First Psalm

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter one of a relatively short fic. Wanted Lux to live.

Chase’s cock is warm and already hard, but she’d suspected as much the minute she saw him. The boys all cluster in the dark, smelling of tree sap and desperation, squirming in front of her like needy puppies.  
A couple of months ago, she could’ve done all of them, would’ve, probably, done all of them, but there’s no time now.  
Chase’s eyes are soft and blue, opened wide, mesmerized. They reflect her own face back at her like two pools of paint, like the soupy water in the bottom of the paint-cans if you looked into them in the early morning sun. Her face in them gleams bony-white, not pretty but not ugly, feral cat eyes and a runny nose.  
Her Dad coughs.  
She thinks about what her face might look like on the pillow in the casket, how stark and white, but consoles herself with the memory of Cece’s fake painted skin. They'd made Her two shades darker than Her notorious pale- Done Her eyebrows, the works. Lux's mother will give her makeup privileges in death. She'll be pretty no matter what.

Lux retracts her hand.

“We can’t do this now.”

His eyes barely register disappointment. He steps back from her without zipping himself.  
She turns to them, their gleaming infant faces shining brighter than ever.

“I gotta get some fresh air. You guys got me all worked up.”

The keys rattle in the bowl and feel especially cold, unused.

“I’ll go wait in the car. You guys wait here for my sisters. We’ve got a lot of stuff.”

She puts her hand on the door and thinks about it only once, the strange dream they’re offering her.

“Where will we go?” She asks.

“Florida.” Chase assures her.

She’d been to Florida one time when Mom was pregnant with Cece- She doesn’t remember it, just the postcard they’d sent to Grandma. Oranges hanging fat from trees and the white flowers, the scent of citrus, and the heat.

“Cool...Florida.”

She opens the door, steps into the darkness, and then makes for the garage. Outside it’s warm and dry, though there’s an undercurrent; Maybe tomorrow it’ll be a chilly morning. She goes through the little door on the side instead of opening the front, and makes her way to the car without turning on the lights. She hasn’t been in it for months, but the smell forces her to pause, though it certainly isn’t due to second thoughts.  
Cherry KoolAid, McDonald’s french fries, the stink of lots of shoes moving in and out and sweat before it turns sour. Baby hair. She’d never wanted kids- That was more Cece and Bonnie’s thing- But maybe one would’ve been nice. She’d thought maybe she and Trip would have kids, little blonde ones with him as an architect father, and her as a secretary or a business woman or something that required her to wear one of those Mom pantsuits with the slinky legs.

She turns the key in the ignition, then sifts through the radio stations until she finds it. It doesn’t take long. Something is listening to her, even if it’s not God.

'I don’t mind you comin’ here

And wasting all my time

‘Cause when you’re standing oh so near

I kinda lose my mind, yeah...'

She tilts her head back as she flicks the lighter, the burst of red flame startling in the dark, and pulls a cigarette from her pocket.


	2. Second Psalm

Bonnie groans. She’s down on her knees, hair glowing gold, face hovering pale and still above the assorted candles that she tends.

“Why pick the car? That’s stupid. Mommy and Daddy could hear you.”

Her eyes are pious but vacant. She moves her fingers above the flames with gentle jumping motions, as though she were God puppeteering a tiny mountain village.

“It’s an art thing,” Mary speaks before Lux can defend herself,

“It’s some poet that Julie girl got her into. That’s how she did it.”

“Which poet?” 

Lux blows a stream of smoke out the window, out into the dark,

“Anne Sexton. She drank a glass of vodka, then locked herself in her garage.”

Bonnie wrinkles her nose,

“Won’t it stink?”

“I don’t think so. Not supposed to, anyways.”

“I still think my method is best.” Therese murmurs. Her hair, forever in her face, hangs down like drapes between them and the book she’s already memorized.

“People live through overdoses all the time.” Lux snorts.

“Name one.” 

“I think Marilyn Monroe survived the first couple of ‘em.” Mary agrees.

“Well, she’s didn’t do it like I’m gonna do it,” Therese slaps her book shut and sets it aside,

“Was the poem really that good?”

“I liked it, and I think poetry is crap. That was more Her thing.” 

Lux nods toward the monstrous congealment of wax and wicks fused to the side of the wall beneath Cecelia’s window, as yellow-red as the lock of Her baby hair still bound with a rubber band in their mother’s jewelry box. Besides Her candle from the craft fair, all they’d had to start with were thick red Christmas stalks and scentless dollar-a-box tea candles saved for power outages. Now that they’re getting low, it’s Therese and Mary’s job to procure more things to burn. Tonight they’ve managed to smuggle in a handful of Mom’s old church lipsticks, one of which Bonnie now holds like a purple flare.

“Can you remember any of it?”

She blows out another stream of smoke.

“Yeah. Hold on.”

She closes her eyes.

“Let the chipmunk praise the Lord as he bounds up Jacob's Ladder. 

Let the airplane praise the Lord as she flirts with the kingdom. 

Let the Good Fairy praise with her heavy bagful of dimes.

Let them praise with a garbage can for all who are cast out.”

“Huh,” Says Therese, actually looking at her,

“Not bad. Who knew you were so romantic.”

Lux shrugs.

She squints down at the street, down at the black-blue windows of the other houses, then glances back over at Bonnie, who’s running her hands over her thighs like she’s already smoothing her party dress. Her hair is the longest and darkest of any of them, so it makes her face look small, and white as a china plate. Lux tilts her head, wondering how Bonnie can seem so much younger than her when she’s a full twelve months older. Mary sinks to her knees.

“Shall we pray?”

Lux tosses her cigarette out the window and slides down into their nightly circle, bowing her head, closing her eyes as she never did in church. They do prayer a little bit differently to how they used to back then. Now they join hands like a witch’s coven so that all their voices will be heard by Her, so that they contribute more energy, more light. It gives Lux a small thrill to honor Cece this way, since it’s something that their mother would frown upon, or maybe even forbid. They’d gotten the idea out of a wiccan book that one of Mary’s friends had leant to her, which they’d coveted like a dirty magazine. Despite the hellfire inherent in such practices, Lux feels more connected to the idea of a beautiful eternity now more than she ever did, slitting her eyes to see the quiet angel faces of her sisters bowed around the purple flare Bonnie has set before them.

Mary leads the prayer with the same tone she used to inflect when it was her turn to say grace, steady and somber. Out of habit Lux blurs out the words, but the drone is nice, the steady sound like the thrumming of a humming bird’s wings. She could fall asleep to it, and almost does, her head lolling forward so that Bonnie has to knee her gently to keep her from breaking the circle. It’s an unnecessary gesture. Lux hasn’t slept for weeks. She’s looking forward to it.

When they finish, harmonizing an Amen, Therese looks at each of them in turn.

“What do we do if we don’t meet up together?”

“What do you mean?” Bonnie rubs her knees, then stands, exposing the red patches.

“In Heaven. What if don’t all get there?” 

She pretends to not be cutting her eyes at Lux but Lux sees it, knows it, feels it, and isn’t super worried about it. She knows for a fact that Therese hasn’t believed in Heaven for years, that her science textbooks have disproved it up one side and down the other.

“We’ll all get there,” Mary says, with no inflection,

“Get the knife.”

Lux drifts to one of Cecelia’s bedside tables and picks up the knife- An old pocket knife of their father’s, dulled overtime but still sharp enough to do the job.

Once again the girls make a circle, though this time they’re standing. From beneath her feathered smock, Bonnie produces the photograph of the Virgin Mary, ghastly-looking in the candle light, warm from her skin.  
Therese slits everyone’s palms and then, quick and clean, her own. One by one they dangle their bleeding hands over the picture, watching the blood curve down their fingers to pool at the tips before dripping- Slap. Slap. Slap. Mary’s beatific eyes clot with it.

When she’s thoroughly marked, the girls stick the picture to the hot wax, which blooms like yellow pus beneath her skin.


	3. Third Psalm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I understand that carbon monoxide poisoning at the stage that Lux is experiencing it would probably have killed her long before this chapter could've taken place, and had she gotten out, she would've required emergency medical care. This is just me being fanciful, because I wanted to describe the dawn sky. If any medical or scientific nerds want to come after me, feel free, the truth was just stretched for poetic purposes!

Lux sits up.

Everything is hazy, rocking back and forth as though she were a stowaway on a pirate ship.   
Through the windshield she can see the faintest strip of light emanating from under the garage door, but can’t tell whether it’s the dawn or the EMS trucks.  
Lux looks down. Her cigarette lighter has burned itself into her palm- Blistered skin clinging to silver metal. She shakes it free, and screams when it comes loose, blood dripping onto the upholstery. It’s then that she realizes the car battery has died.

She reaches over with her good hand and tugs the door handle. It takes a couple of tries but finally the door pops, groans, and swings open. She steps out.  
The concrete bends under her feet like taffy. She rolls out of the passenger seat onto the floor, wheezing a bit, her knees aching from impact and new bruises. The rush of blood to her brain makes the darkness whirl and shriek and she bows her head, vomiting nothing but cornflake paste and bile. She presses her forehead to the cold floor and listens hard, but no sound comes from inside the house.

She crawls, hand over foot, to the side door that leads to the yard.

* * *

The sky coming up around her is pale blue fading into dark, the sun not yet fully risen. On her knees, she crawls into the overgrown grass of the front yard, her hair brushing against the petals of the final daylillies. The morning is cool and dusky, just as she’d predicted.  
She tucks her foot under herself again and this time the ground holds, and she’s on her feet, trembling like a newborn colt. There’s a spike in her temple as the blood rushes to her head again but after a time it settles and she’s holding herself up on a rusted metal pole used for novelty flags. She looks down the street in the direction of Chase Buell’s and inhales deeply the molding scent of her house. She lets go of the flagpole, and takes a step.

* * *

“Lux.” 

Chase’s backyard is big by most standards. There’s a firepit, a new playset from Lowes, and a stone walkway leading up to the back door. His Mom has a neat flowerbed of irises, daylillies, and white rose bushes pressed against the fence; His Dad has left the grill out overnight.  
Standing in the doorway, Chase looks like his yard- Clean and tended to. His sleepless eyes dart from her blood and vomit stained top to her bad hand, which she’s cradling. The balloon faces are back, only this time they’re as gray and soundless as fog.

“Holy shit.”

“Can you drive me to Trip’s house?”

“We- We were just about to call the paramedics.”

‘“Don’t bother. They’re dead. I’m not.”

His mouth opens and closes like a goldfish, his curly hair sticking to his forehead. 

“Your parents, too?”

“No, but they won’t be a problem.”

Chase glances back over his shoulder at the peanut gallery. A few of them nod. One of them is staring at Lux so hard her teeth hurt, but maybe that’s just carbon monoxide.

“Yeah, okay... But we have to call someone.”

“Do me a favor,” She peers into the darkness where eye sets shine like hungry cats,

“Wait for them to do it.”

One by one they nod, the panes of their glasses reflecting, their wispy mustaches, even then, shimmering with sweat.

Chase touches her shoulder lightly and she has the deep, profound urge to cry. Her eyes burn and her throat aches and things start to spin again, but she glances around the corner of the house and collects herself. Her roof looks dull and worn, even from here.

“Let’s go.”


	4. Fourth Psalm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long! I have a couple other, more urgent projects.

Chase’s Mom’s car smells different from theirs- Fewer kids, and the reek of pubescent boys, musky and sour. A tiny plastic Mickey Mouse hangs from the rear-view mirror. A Twinkie wrapper crinkles under her foot.

Chase turns the key in the ignition and leans back over the shoulder of the driver’s seat, squinting slightly as he pulls out onto the road.

“*Your* Mom and Dad won’t notice, right?” Lux asks, peering through the rear window at the sleepy house.

“Nah. Dad drank cause it’s the weekend, Mom’s sitting with my great aunt. We’d still better make this quick, though.”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna listen to something?”

“Go ahead.”

Chase turns on the radio and switches it to the rock station. The air in the car molds with the white bread whine of Styx. Lux rolls the window down and lets the wind bash itself against her face.

She can still feel Chase watching her but doesn’t watch him back.

“Are you and Trip running away?”

“No. I don’t know where I’m going. But I’m getting out of that house.”

“Is that what it is, then? Your Mom and Dad?”

Her stomach lurches in a furiously hungry, sick way, a feeling that’s been alien to her since Mom stopped buying groceries. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Are the rest of them-? Are they all-?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses and blinks up at the limitless sky.

"Rejoice with a Mustang for it will dance down the highway and bump no one.   
Appear with a flashlight so the stars will not get tired.   
Bring forth a wheel to cart the dead into paradise."

The certainty she’d felt at home is wearing off and a tiny flicker bursts in her chest like a flower through the first frost- Mary. She can feel Mary blinking and breathing but the other tethers- Cece, hacked off, Therese, stagnant, Bonnie, chewed in the middle, all lie numbly against her fingertips like dead nerves.

The houses start to get bigger and broader, more colorful, less boxy. Chase’s face is no longer gray, but an almost audible trembling has set in. 

Lux lights a cigarette and places it between his lips.

“Thanks.” He says around it, but coughs, and his eyes water.

They pull into Trip’s driveway with a scuttling of sun-white gravel, the sun itself just beginning to peek into the sky. A wash of gold slithers into Chase’s hair as he leaps out of driver’s side to open her door.

She steps out and breathes deeply. Coconut, mint, exhaust fumes, and the reek of Trip’s car that trickles out from the garage.

Chase pulls her suddenly and unevenly into a hug.

“I won’t tell them anything.”

“Thanks.”

He pulls back, rests his soft, wet palms on her shoulders, then points over the fence and towards the back of the house.

“Trip’s window is just over there- Ground floor. Green curtains. Can’t miss it.”

She nods.

“Lux-”

He looks helpless, his arms held open, his eyes sunk into his face and outlined against his nose by dark stains. 

“I can’t finish you off,” She holds up her throbbing palm, “Hand’s burnt.”

She turns and opens the outside gate, then steps onto the tiny patio area that surrounds the bathtub-sized pool, shutting it hard behind her.

She hears Chase drive away, slow and steady, as though driving like a grandma could erase everything that’s happened over the past twelve hours.

Lux slips her legs into the pool, the closest thing she’s had to a shower in almost a month.   
The water that bubbles up around her is a startling, clear-glass blue, blue all the way to the bottom, blue the way pools in hotels looked blue at night.   
She sits down on the top step, tightens the knot of her halter-top, puts her head in her good hand, and cries.


End file.
